Community

We believe that a healthy ecosystem competes on innovative features, not critical mass. The social web should be centered around people, not platforms, and artificial walls should not deny them the relationships they've built online.

The club model teaches us something: organizations that endure don’t try to include everyone. They’re clear about their identity, even as that identity evolves. Some clubs that were men-only for centuries now welcome women. They haven’t survived by being vague, they’ve survived by being clear, then changing what that clarity meant over time.

Ultimately, Agreements are a collective wish we make about how we might be in the same space together. That space could be a classroom, a sports team, a club, a conference, committees or boards, an organizing group. They reflect what we need to participate while feeling joyful, trusted, and brave.

But they also can be flimsy as hell.

People have all kinds of ambitions, goals, and plans, but consistently following through is the hard part. Some people are wired to make steady progress or have learned to do this well. But many people depend on external pressures and constraints, feedback, check-ins, and high stakes — financial, professional, or social — to spur them into action.

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Kin-building is, at its heart, about finding ease and choosing to rest in others. When you have more people in your life, there is less on your individual shoulders to do and achieve. I do wish I had known sooner that it was about people just as much as it was about accomplishments.

Platforms like GoFundMe, reddit grief communities, mutual aid networks, real-time disaster storytelling, and global uprisings in reaction to systemic inequality are demonstrative, real world examples that connectivity breeds empathy and unity. The work of Taiwan’s digital minister Audrey Tang during the COVID-19 pandemic — quickly using the... See more

Stop trying to make social networks succeed, stop dreaming of a universal network. Instead, invest in your own communities. Help them make long-term, custom and sustainable solutions. Try to achieve small and local successes instead of pursuing an imaginary universal one. It will make you happier.

It will make all of us happier.